Emvergeoning

This is the initial post on a series of artists I discovered at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts current Dark Matters exhibition. Joachim Schmid Selected Photo Works 1982-2007 is a mid-career retrospective for the Berlin based, self described “professional looker.” It features found photographs that the artist ripped, carefully framed or shredded and reconfigured like the postcard inspired example below.

Finding photographs at the largest flea market in Berlin, Schmid appropriates the dismissed evidence of other people’s artifacts. The shredded pieces reminded me of Jessica Barnett DeCuir’s cut up record album covers as well as the CutUp Collective occasionally documented on Wooster…You can read more about Schmid’s work in the companion monograph.

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A friend recently returned from conducting sociological research on the Zapatistas in San Cristobal de las Casas. While he was there, he documented some intriguing stencil art. Justin made an immediate connection to local miscreant Scotch!

I’m in San Francisco working on a recap of some phenomenal shows at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA and a tiny weird nail salon turned hipster gallery called Queen’s Nails…more soon!!

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I experienced this today on a weird wading walking type of thing..

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Just a quick note to point out two Flickr accounts with some photos of note: our own Justin Parr has been going on a Flickr binge, posting everything from Barcelona street art to Tacoland’s final moments.

Meanwhile fellow blogger Salvador Castillo has been documenting central Texas art events including the Texas Biennial and First Friday.

These accounts will be worth keeping an eye on…

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No. He doesn’t. Stop all that scandalous scuttlebutting, he’s just trying to make a living by drawing and running a skateboard company and making your eyeballs endure some illustrated pleasures. Behold the Chernobyl-esque lambkins below…this is an older example but you can peruse the sparkling new work of Austin’s busiest beaver at Art Palace next Saturday, March 31st.

oh, devoted young readers, I highly recommend reading his guest blog on Fecal Face. The slow degradation of photos truly entertains beyond your everyday blogginess. If you like skate ramps and lone star and deer skulls and walruses, then you like Michael Sieben. And if you like Michael Sieben and Michael Sieben likes to lick carpet, well, go figure.

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this is one of those anti blog type posts where I tell you about mine and bens adventures on the south side.

(using convieniently placed photos)

heres ben judson holding a monkeywrench.

heres a sky in the shape of a brush fire.

heres some really silly graffiti.

thats all for the today.  I didnt even include any photos of my cat, marn-ball.

( adventure day was officially february 20th 2007 )

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These piggies all have something to say…but you have to go to the Mcnay this month to listen. This little piggy [Basquiat] went to marketing class, this little piggy [Warhol] stayed home, this little piggy [Wyeth] painted portraits and they all frolicked in a Manhattan play pen called The Factory.

Everything about “Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth & Basquiat” hovers around the alluring glow of the cult of personality. Given that caveat, Jamie Wyeth takes the blue ribbon for his portraits of subjects as disparate as John F. Kennedy, a smirking swine and a she-male in a ball gown. His oil paintings and pencil drawings exude a sense of classically trained talent with a mischievous twist. The show itself is a mixed fruit salad of taxidermied pets, toy train sets and painfully outdated haute couture. Continue Reading »

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If you drive down South Flores on the edge of Southtown, you’ve seen it. Covered in graffiti and the citys answer to it (the subconcious art of graffiti removal) .. The Old Judson Candy Company sits high on the horizon near the intersection of Guadalupe and South Flores. (a few blocks down from South Alamo) . For years, this building was left virtually wide open to the world while it fell into disrepair, Lots of people & animals passed through it, including a large number of graffiti artists from all over the country (remember clogged caps 1,2,3, and 4?). As a result the walls inside are literally teeming with life .. About 6 months back, I introduced Future Worker Girl of Potter-Belmar Labs to the site, by showing her a random assortment of photos I had taken traipsing through the candy house early one morning. While I took the photos during a time that the building was literally wide open from the front, back, and sides.. It has since been carefully sealed off from all unwanted intruders. As a result of her new interest in the site, she proclaimed a gathering of data towards a renegade video projection onto the building. After last nights Bozo Texino film screening she popped the question on us, would we accompany her down to the sight of the old candy factory to view a projection of a melding of photos of the inside of the now sealed building on the outside? Of course.

The results were beautiful.

Future Worker Girl:

her “Something out of ghost-busters” vehicle.

Andy Benavides, Mike Casey. and visiting resident artist to UTSA, Chris Kubick view the projection from the bus stop benches.

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Found this by way of the BBC today:

As I emerged from my little transport capsule, I initially felt that something was off, but quickly came to see that something really was quite on. Paint was everywhere. On the ground, on the tiles, across adverts, covering tube maps and even electronic signs. A grin spread across my face as I realised that Camden Town tube station got massively graffiti bombed!

Say what you will, but I love a good graffiti bomb. Perhaps it’s my inner psychedelic soldier still fighting for the freedom of the mind or perhaps it’s my resistance to becoming too much of an adult, but I love seeing the normal world bathed in colour, reborn in Pantone.

Thats an excerpt from a blog written by a guy named Dave Knapik from Chicago who has recently moved to London. I was also recently in London and spent time in this, the busiest of the london tube stations overall. From the amount of CCTV cameras and security EVERYWHERE in that city, something of this scale being pulled off is quite a feat. Here’s Flickr account with over 50 photos of the incident.

The online debate over the validity of this kind of thing is raging in full swing, I thought it might be fun to rage along over here as well.

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Filmmaker Bill Daniel has contacted me about showing his film “Who is Bozo Texino,” at FL!GHT Gallery in January. Looks like the date is set for January 18th, and 5 dollars. Anybody who has seen me rabidly watch the trains go by and try to read the chalk marking on them will understand just how darn excited I am to be able to show this in the gallery.

OFFICIAL TITLE:

This Spectacular Travel Adventure Faithfully Photographed In Realistic Black And White Film At Considerable Risk From Speeding Freight Trains And In Secret Hobo Jungles In The Dogged Pursuit Of The Impossibly Convoluted And Heretofore Untold History Of The Century-Old Folkloric Practice Known As Hobo And Railworker Graffiti And Chronicling The Absurd Quest For The True Identity Of Railroading’s Greatest Artist Will Likely Amuse And Confound You In Its Sincere Attempt To Understand And Preserve This Mysterious Artform.

####### WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? #######

Read on for images and statement.

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sometimes. it doesnt all make sense.

sometimes. it doesnt all make sense.

sometimes.

it makes very little sense.

just sometimes. it makes a lot of sense.

this is your quarry.

get to it .

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